In association with rapid popularization and spreading of mobile telephones, there have been proposed a health management and abnormality reporting system making use of a mobile terminal and a living body sensor.
For instance, Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2003-150718 (Patent document 1) discloses an always-connected health-management system a portable remote health condition data measuring device in which a notebook type health condition data measuring device and a commercially available mobile terminal are combined with each other and a management center for collecting and analyzing data transmitted from the measuring device. In the invention, however, the living body sensor is required to be directly contacted to a skin of a living body, and medical knowledge is more or less required for determine a position where the sensor is to be set, and therefore the system is very hard to use for users.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2003-125097 (Patent document 2) discloses a health information collecting device for mobile terminals for the purpose to collect health information with a mobile terminal, but the invention is novel only in the point that a signal transmission path between a living body sensor and a mobile terminal as a communication medium is wireless, and in the point that a health database system is linked to the device.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2002-261955 (Patent document 3) discloses a system set in an accessory such as a wrist watch or a necklace and including not only a sensor for measuring a blood pressure and a body temperature, but also a transmission circuit for transmitting a radio signal when an emergency is to be reported. With this system, when it is determined that a user's health condition is not good by a microcomputer in the accessory, a radio signal is transmitted from the transmission circuit to notify occurrence of the emergency to a prespecified place such as the user's home or a place where the user has gone. However, novelty of the invention consists only in the point that a frequency of 2.45 GHz is used for transmission of a radio signal to suppress the influence to other medical equipment caused by a malfunction.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2003-109160 (Patent document 4) describes that a living body sensor is attached to a human body to detect an attack of a cardiac disease, data acquired by the sensor is sent from the sensor to a mobile terminal from time to time, and a report on an emergency is made based on the data.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2003-141667 (Patent document 5) describes a method of reporting an abnormal health condition of an inhabitant in a solitary home, a home of a few members, and especially in a home of the aged person or aged people by detecting the abnormal health condition with a water meter, a gas meter, and other types of sensors and reporting the abnormal condition to people responsible to checking the meters, a security center, and related people. The invention utilizes living information such as displays of a water meter or a gas meter, and this system is adapted only to use in a house, and is a typical example lacking versatility.
As an invention not using an external device such as a living body sensor, Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2003-87436 (Patent document 6) describes an emergency reporting system enabling registration in an emergency reporting system and up to transmission of information on an emergency without using any voice and an emergency reporting device used in the system, and furthermore Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2003-111735 (Patent document 7) describes an health information management system utilizing a portable terminal device such as a mobile terminal, a PHS (registered trade name). In the two inventions described above, a user having an abnormal health condition is required to act for operating a mobile terminal, and therefore the inventions lack the usefulness in practical use as a system for reporting an emergency in a human health condition.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. HEI 11-284711 (Patent document 8) describes a mobile terminal having a crime prevention bell buzzer function as a crime prevention alarm device and a reporting system. It is generally considered that, when a perpetrator tries to do harm such as restraint to a victim, at first the perpetrator holds both arms of the victim, and the victim can not pull a hand strap as expected in the invention.
Furthermore there have been proposed a crime prevention alarming device and a reporting system based on a combination of living body abnormality adaptors, and for instance, Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2003-218997 (Patent document 9) describes a mobile terminal having both a crime prevention function and an emergency alerting function and a method of operating the crime prevention function and the emergency alerting function. With the action such as pulling out an antenna with a pulling force stronger than a prespecified level or pressing any key, the invention is rather low in the effectiveness and can hardly be carried out.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2003-219062 (Patent document 10) describes a mobile terminal having a crime prevention function for alerting occurrence of an emergency and a crime prevention adaptor for a mobile terminal. It can not be regarded, however, that the device according to the invention is adapted for reporting an emergency.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2001-236583 (Patent document 11) discloses a safety confirmation device in which information concerning safety of an object person is collected with a sensor and the information is accumulated as time history record, a degree of abnormality is determined by an abnormality degree classifying section, the data is reported to a reporting unit with a prespecified small power wireless communication, and then the information is delivered from the reporting unit to an external device. However, in the safety confirmation device, data collected by spending a long time is required to determine a degree of “abnormality”, and the device is not adapted for a case requiring a quick countermeasure to an emergency.                Patent document 1: Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2003-150718        Patent document 2: Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2003-125097        Patent document 3: Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2002-261955        Patent document 4: Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2003-109160        Patent document 5: Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2003-141667        Patent document 6: Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2003-87436        Patent document 7: Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2003-111735        Patent document 8: Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. HEI 11-284711        Patent document 9: Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2003-218997        Patent document 10: Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2003-219062        Patent document 11: Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2001-236583        